It will be recalled that to secure safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is necessary for the operator of a web site to designate a “take-down agent” by means of a registration filed with the Copyright Office. For the past eighteen years, the Copyright Office had provided only a cumbersome and expensive method of paper filing for this registration process.
Alert copyright listserv member Sophilia Wu recently posted a very helpful reminder that the Copyright Office has now released an e-filing system for such designations. She quotes the Copyright Office:
Transition period: Any service provider that has designated an agent with the Office prior to December 1, 2016, in order to maintain an active designation with the Office, must submit a new designation electronically using the online registration system by December 31, 2017. Any designation not made through the online registration system will expire and become invalid after December 31, 2017. Until then, the Copyright Office will maintain two directories of designated agents: the directory consisting of paper designations made pursuant to the Office’s prior interim regulations which were in effect between November 3, 1998 and November 30, 2016 (the “old directory”), and the directory consisting of designations made electronically through the online registration system (the “new directory”). During the transition period, a compliant designation in either the old directory or the new directory will satisfy the service provider’s obligation under section 512(c)(2) to designate an agent with the Copyright Office. During the transition period, to search for a service provider’s most up-to-date designation, begin by using the new directory. The old directory should only be consulted if a service provider has not yet designated an agent in the new directory.
Alert listserv member Doug Isenberg has blogged about this new registration system in a very helpful article entitled All About the Copyright Office’s New DMCA System. As he points out, the new system is less expensive and less cumbersome to use as compared with the old system.
Thanks as always to Sophilia and Doug for posting. (If you have not already done so, you should probably join the Copyright listserv.)